Monday, 31 August 2015

Whatever our achievements, or aim
towards yer actual 'self actualisation'
the measure of how we fall short
comes in how unaware we remain
of the pain and loss we cause in people.
People that we say we like,
as we strive to rediscover ourselves
through leaving their losses undealt with.

Sunday, 30 August 2015

including up to 70,000 types of fungi,
would like to thank planet earth
for the life we have shared so far.

The skin flakes, crumbs of food,
soil, animal fur and decaying fabrics
with which I co-habit, in particular
Corynebacterium and Dermabacter
who are peculiar to my gender,
find a fuller life in each other
than all the totalitarian attempts
at purity and cleanliness ever could.

Friday, 28 August 2015

I have long admired the idea
of Unconditonal Positive Regard,
and the silence of Rogerian therapists.
Everytime cold callers phone up,
wanting my assent to some values
they are paid to try to covertly sell,
I try to sooth away their restlessness
and their need to lie, built on the fear
of rejection, by leaving the phone near me
so I can hear them talk. I say nothing.

Thursday, 27 August 2015

30 years ago consumer surveys got longer
and with each extra question people were asked
the answers were analysed and cross-referenced.

As lives turned into lifestyles
the public were flattered,
by psychologists asking them
for their deepest thoughts.
The interviewed did not think
that the data would be used
to sell them goods they did not need
which would push them into debt
as if the only idea left untapped
might be a gift for financial probity.

Now, in the UK, ATOS uses that same technique
to probe the weak, the poor, and the sick
pushed out of a shrinking market for paid work
who have been left on benefits, long term,
for the long lost traces of their 'aspirations'.

Wednesday, 26 August 2015

Television is society's mirror.
Like all popular media,
from cats-whisker radio
through to the internet,
it refracts the character
of its audience back to them
in ways which make them hide
whilst drawing them in, horrified.

This is most true with light quizzes
-where under the pressure of time
contestants mine their finite knowledge
and reply in cliches for modest prizes.
The prizes are fig leaves,
small enough in themselves
but big enough to disguise
the interests of the biggest winners;
the advertisers, programme makers
and multi-national corporate sponsors,
who for leading the home audience
in flat rules-based one-sided conversations
with occasional spikey one-liners
make everyone deaf to each other.

Sunday, 23 August 2015

When we were both younger
An old friend used to lecture me
on how gay men are emotionally stuck
at the age of 14, the age when their families
expect them to take the path to normalcy,
and for being rebellious they wanted
to take a less popular route to what they hoped
might be an equally valid form of adulthood.
He exemplified this 'path less chosen' story,
from different places we shared the same belief.
We had both grown up through living in places
where neither family nor child declared their aim,
and each vied to control the other through secrets and silence.

What I could never say to my friend
was how 14 is a difficult age for everybody-
men, women, straight and gay - we are all strays.
For all Normalcy is the path of least resistance
to common acceptance,
and the route to carlessness
denial, and vehement competition.

Whatever our sexuality
shooting ourselves in the foot
is the first step in the journey.

I am a piece of rotting flesh and dumbly I rot.
Everyday my flesh carries my smell
which people say reminds them of life.
They come to me because of this,
and get happy and upset, and annoyed,
and disgusted, and sometimes feel compassion.
They don’t care to realize they are rotting too,
or that their occupation
kills the space they say they are living on.

Wednesday, 12 August 2015

Cynicism will outrun sarcasm every time.
With sarcasm the speaker cares too much
to be calm. Their passion betrays them.
Perhaps it is better to be open in passion
than closed by anything else,
particularly when being closed
becomes retrospective unawareness
of when we closed our selves down.

Monday, 10 August 2015

'When, in 1978, Henry Moore exhibited two dozen major sculptures on the lawns of Kensington Gardens (an ugly visual assault of insufferable arrogance), accompanying every one of them was a notice forbidding the touch of human hand, but curators had forgotten the interest that dogs would inevitably show in them, taking them to be objects on which they must deposit urine. My bitches were not alone in this; every passing dog lifted his leg to add to the palimpsest of urinary calling cards, and every bitch hitched her buttocks as high as she could to leave her dribbling trace. I have often wondered ever since if, when returned to the pastures of Much Hadham Henry noticed a change in the patination here and there: convinced that the first emptying of the bladder in the morning, richer in nutrients than the later emptyings, produced the very best of natural patinas Matisse (another occasional maker of bronzes) kept his fresh casts in his garden, sometimes for years, so that he could pee on them.'-Brian Sewell from the book 'Sleeping with Dogs'.

Friday, 7 August 2015

I was reared on apocryphal stories
of 1930s health care and welfare.
If those tales were merely half true
they were both appalling and unprovable.
The evidence was in the shortened lives
of the once living, now long dead.

One story I took at face value
was to do with how free medicine
was issued by Charitable Hospital Boards.
These boards always had clergy on them.
The medicine was given if/when the patient
sang a hymn well enough for those listening.

What happened if the clergy were deaf?
if the patients, who were ill, sang poorly?
Protested from a position of weakness?
Or went mute from despair? I was never told.
I assume they did not get the medication.

If such a board were to exist nowadays
it would highly secular, but still patients
would have to sing for their meds,
never knowing how loud their hymns
to Mammon were meant to be
until they shared the board's insanity.

Thursday, 6 August 2015

I am often propositioned by Jehovah's Witnesses.
We both know how the dialogue is meant to go.
I know this because every time we meet I listen.
Unlike many, I treat them as if they are real.
Because I avoid being dismissive or frustrated
I make a space which makes for mutual respect,
a space that last until the end of that conversation.

Would that I could be as calm, composed,
and as unprovoked by everything else in life.

Wednesday, 5 August 2015

From early on in my life what I wanted most
was a front door that would help me choose
without malice who to let in and keep out.
Many decided on very particular doors,
spaces and boundaries, for me.
The choices presented seemed personal
but how personal were they?

Even as I was helped to choose,
my helpers helped themselves
more than they ever helped me.
They vetoed parts and selves
of mine which were more vital
than they knew, before I could stop them.

Whether the fear was of immorality
or sheer ineptitude made no difference
-I was shut in and beyond the pale.

Saturday, 1 August 2015

1-looking at a very cloudy sky
and thinking 'That is what
'Fifty shades of Grey' is about'.

2-with the passage of time
finding the appetite for life
reduces, so shared meals
become more about quality
than quantity. Though simplicity helps.

3-when in public libraries, banks,
with your doctor, or in shops,
preferring to talk with the staff
about your needs from their stock.
Live human beings seem to be rare
and worth giving thanks for.
Perhaps more than you value your own life.

Whatever shape it takes on
public service will last long into the future.